During this interesting event, Niels Mansveld from AMIS presented about UX Frameworks. And he started off his presentation with an illustration about how user interfaces can create an “experience”, so to say. This illustration was a movie clip by Pixar, taken from the movie “Lifted”. It was so funny and, if you would watch it, you immediately know what Niels meant!

The day after I thought to show this movie at home and I found the YouTube link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY1_HrhwaXU). When I watched the clip, I realized that there was a second part to the preview, which Niels had left out, probably because of time concerns.
What struck me is actually the following…

I have seen quite a few views on user interfaces lately… Most of them talk about having clean and intuitive layouts and that it is important to think thoroughly about this. Shakeeb Rahman and Ultan O’broin are names that pop into my mind when thinking about this, and these gentleman are very clear about this!
Clean, intuitive UI’s make the Enterprise thrive!

Okay, but, as said, the clip went on for a little bit!

The second half tells the story of the Toad saving the situation, by using this same ultra intricate interface! By knowing what knob did which function, he was super-quick in saving the day!
Now, what would that mean?

Having a clean and intuitive layout may not be the ultimate solution in any situation, regardless! Having an application with a learning curve (not immediately judging the steepness of this learning curve is not always bad. If this interface helps the professional do his/her job in just a fraction of the time, because he/she knows what button to push, I think it’s a good thing.
I have to admit, there were one or two remarks about this in the flashing demo by Paco van der Linden… Bit I guess it is too little emphasized.

There are several applications where these, more complicated interfaces do a superb job in helping the task at hand. And, as with anything, don’t blindly follow “best practices”, also in designing user interfaces!
Step back and think what would work best in your situation!

The event was super-well attended by a lot of enthusiastic people, comprised of students, novel developers and experienced seniors alike. I also got to meet a whole bunch of super interesting people (again) like:

Ultan Ó Broin (@ultan)

Patrick Barel (@patch72)

Noel Portugal (@noelportugal)

Lucas Jellema (@lucasjellema)

Lonneke Dikmans (@lonnekedikmans)

Mark Vilrokx (@mvilrokx)

Aylin Uysal

Through this post I would like to share some of what I picked up from the presentations and demos I went to and key learning points I figured out for myself.

Demo of Oracle voice (by Mark Vilrokx)
Oracle voice is a solutions based on Siri powered by Nuance which in fact now comprises a super lightweight front-end interface for voice-controlling Oracle Fusion Apps. The actual voice recognition and lexicon integration is done on the Nuance back-end.
A personal fun thing to find out is that actually the technology is again based on the work of the Belgian speech-specialists of Lernout & Hauspie, which I got to meet over 10 years ago!

Demo of Oracle mobilitics
Basically this is a demonstration of one of my key-take-aways for today.
These days you, as a classical developer, are challenged to step back, forget “grabbing data and throwing it into a grid or master-detail” and think about how you would “interact” with the data you have in your system.
If you think about it, you would not really want to scroll through master-detail… You want to visualize your data, so it becomes something more tangible and give you an overview with the ability to drill down or zoom in.
The “Designing for Mobility & Simplicity” talk of Aylin Uysal dove deeper into this.

Presentation UX directions with HTML5 by Mark Vilrokx
For me this was somewhat of a confirmation, strangely enough. Basically HTML5 is used as a rapid application development framework for Oracle ADF applications. In effect meaning that an Oracle APEX development environment supersedes Oracle ADF in both speed and diversity of application development (J) End of sentence

Presentation Designing for simplicity by Aylin Uysal
Stressing that person to person collaboration is still super important also (and perhaps even especially) for UX design. Organize several sesison consisting of different stakeholder groups, since UI design differs by user (or stakeholder) category.
Information abundance in classical UIs is to be replaced by minimal data UI design. Having less data, better (more visually represented) strongly increases UX!

Presentation Wireframing 101 by Ultan Ó Broin
Wireframing, in this context was new to me. Create a low fidelity “sketch” of what you want, don’t prototype anything yet! Create difference wireframes of applications and application flows to prevent “Squeak and poop” behavior of management or customers when presenting UX designs in wireframe format. A wireframe is no nicely worked out app, making it difficult to judge for outsiders.
A nice example of such rapid prototyping is the way Google Glasses is developed.
A good tool for digital wireframing (but also just for that) is Balsamiq which is used by the Oracle UX team as the preferred wireframing tool.

Presentation One picture worth a thousand words by Lucas Jellema
In this presentation of more pictures that words, Lucas gave some very cool examples of how pictures are able to, indeed, transfer much more information that words. An inspiration to use when you are UX-ing.

Visit to the Chamber of Secrets
I am so sorry, I had to sign quite an NDA before being let in… Please visit your local Oracle UX-session!